The Weekly Sift

This week’s Sift was assembled against a headwind. All week I’ve been battling a fairly heavy cold, which I kept falsely promising myself would be gone by Monday. As a result, the amount of quality brain-power available to sift the news has been limited this week, and what I produce today will undoubtedly suffer from that lack. It was not a week for subtle contemplation of whether I’ve been asking the right questions.

But I can testify to this: the “fever dream” is a real phenomenon. My slightly overheated brain, whose stamina was questionable all day long, devoted its nights to constructing Byzantine plots on elaborate sets involving characters ranging from Snoop Dogg to Loki to Doc Adams from “Gunsmoke”. My normal-temperature brain wouldn’t know how to do this.

Anyway, the news: The ridiculous case against the abortion drug mifepristone had oral arguments at the Supreme Court Tuesday. The conservative majority would love to give the anti-abortion movement what it wants here, but this particular case is too badly constructed to allow that outcome. Instead, I expect to see a ruling in June that dismisses the case, but provides the movement with a road map for constructing the next one: “Here, guys. This is what we need to see.” That’s going to be the topic of the featured post.

The summary has some Trump-trial news to plow through, beginning with the NY appeals court reducing Trump’s bond and giving him ten more days to come up with it. (Until Thursday, if I count right.) That happened just before I pushed the “Post” button last Monday, and we still have no explanation of what the court was thinking.

Meanwhile, Trump misbehaved in another case, the NY state Stormy Daniels case that starts jury selection in two weeks. The judge left himself and his family out of the gag order against Trump, so he proceeded to attack the judge’s adult daughter numerous times. I wish I spoke better simian, because this appears to be some kind of primitive assertion of dominance. But I can’t decide whether the right response is to dominate back, say by revoking Trump’s bail for some period of time, or if that’s exactly what the Orange One is trying to provoke. I could go on, but let’s leave that to the summary post.

In the physical world, the big event was the collapse of the Key Bridge in Baltimore. If this were happening in a red state full of “real” Americans, the next move would be obvious: Congress would quickly pass a bipartisan bill providing money to rebuild. But Baltimore is one of those nasty cities full of Black and Brown Democrats, so things can’t be that simple.

Easter happened, so of course we were treated to a round of accusations of how the Biden administration was insulting Christians, who are the most coddled people in America. But at least they have the new Trump Bible to seek comfort in. Ronna McDaniel was quickly hired and fired by NBC. Israelis demonstrated against the Netanyahu government. And a few other things happened, some of which I even noticed.

Everything will appear at its own pace this morning. I’m vaguely intending to get the featured post out by 9 EDT and the summary by noon, but don’t count on that.